Resources
Access Consultants and Training Providers
Birds of Paradise
In the 1990s, Birds of Paradise Theatre Company became Scotland’s first touring theatre company employing disabled and non-disabled actors and is now disability-led through the appointment of their current Artistic Directors. BOP delivers a wide range of training and consultancy services within the UK and internationally.
Website: www.boptheatre.co.uk/what-we-do/training
Resources: www.boptheatre.co.uk/what-we-do/resources
Instagram: boptheatre
Twitter: boptheatre
Facebook: birdsofparadisetheatre
YouTube: BirdsofParadise011
CRIPtic Arts
CRIPtic Arts is a deaf and disabled-led artistic development organisation focused on the future of accessibility. We design and embed access improvements across the creative industries through research, training, consultancy and service provision, while also offering a range of workshops, creative projects and showcasing opportunities to support deaf and disabled people to establish their artistic careers.
Website: www.cripticarts.org
Service: www.cripticarts.org/access-advisory-service
Twitter: CRIPticArts
Disability Arts Cymru (DAC)
DAC works with companies and professionals in the arts across Wales and beyond to explore themes of equality, diversity, best practice and reflect on unconscious and systemic biases. It offers: Equality and Wellbeing training, Arts Best Practice workshops, seminars and presentations, and mentoring and tailored support.
Website: www.disabilityarts.cymru/consultancy
Euan’s Guide
Euan’s Guide is the award-winning disabled access charity, best known for euansguide.com, the disabled access review website where disabled people, their families, friends and carers can find and share the accessibility of venues around the UK and beyond. The website shares thousands of experiences and is the go-to tool for many disabled people. Euan’s Guide also make tens of thousands of accessible toilets safer, run the UK’s largest Access Survey, and lots more.
Website: www.euansguide.com
Website: Edinburgh International Book Festival Case Study: www.euansguide.com/news/book-festival-case-study
Instagram: euansguide
Twitter: EuansGuide
Facebook: EuansGuide
Pinterest: euansguide
Inklusion
Inklusion will be offering a range of consultation packages in the future. All our packages will be specifically tailored to the literature sector. You can keep up to date with what we offer by following us on social media and signing up for our newsletter via our website.
Website: www.inklusionguide.org
Instagram: inklusionguide
Twitter: inklusionguide
Interpreters of Colour Network
Interpreters of Colour Network is available for consultation, supporting organisations with: policy, legal frameworks and procurement strategies; accessibility standards; booking and working with interpreters; signposting to resources and deaf organisations; equality, diversity and inclusion; increasing visibility and representation of interpreters of colour; training; mentoring and supervision and research.
Shape Arts
Shape Arts is a disability-led arts organisation which works to improve access to culture for disabled people by providing opportunities for disabled artists, training cultural institutions to be more open to disabled people, and through running participatory arts and development programmes.
Training: www.shapearts.org.uk/news/training
Signed Culture
Signed Culture offers arts and cultural organisations: deaf awareness training; reviewing of marketing materials and communications channels to ensure that they are accessible to deaf people; a mystery shopper programme so that you can receive personalised feedback about the experience of BSL users accessing your work; assistance in establishing local BSL users forums and social groups for BSL users who are interested in arts and culture.
Website: www.signedculture.org.uk/consultancy-services
Instagram: signed_culture
Twitter: SignedCulture
Facebook: signedculture
The Social Investment Consultancy
TSIC offers a range of services, including facilitating meaningful social change and fostering a commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion within the social impact domain. They partner with their clients to incorporate these values into their social impact strategies and at each stage of their operational processes.
Website: www.tsiconsultancy.com/our-services
Instagram: theimpactgeeks
Twitter: tsiconsultancy
Tilting the Lens
TTL is an accessibility consultancy founded by Sinéad Burke that is working to bring visibility to inaccessibility and develop solutions with disabled people – not just for disabled people. With education, advocacy, and design, they support clients to accelerate systemic and cultural change. Their work creates a pathway to a world that is more accessible and equitable for everyone.
Website: www.tiltingthelens.com
Instagram: tiltingthelens
Twitter: tiltingthelens
Alice Wong (of Disability Visibility Project)
Alice Wong offers a range of services, including: organising panel discussions with disabled people; speaking to writers’ rooms, producers, studios and organisations about disabled characters, stories, and issues; reviewing and providing feedback on scripts that feature disability; partnership and strategy on crafting campaigns by and for people with disabilities; moderating and/or organising presentations, workshops, and trainings and a review of content such as policies, media, research proposals, reports, signage.
Website: www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com/hire-me
Twitter: SFdirewolf
Disability Organisations and Networks
UK Disability Network
An industry-wide disability network run by Penguin Random House Children’s assistant editor Ellie Drewry, and Cat Mitchell, lecturer in publishing at the University of Derby.
The network will seek to improve working conditions for disabled people in the industry and create a community of disabled publishing professionals. This will include people who are neurodivergent and/or chronically ill, or who are currently coming to terms with a shift in identity.
Its longer-term goal will be to improve the representation of disability in books, and to make sure there are better opportunities for disabled writers looking to get published.
Newsletter Sign-up: derby.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=33265bda2b9157862172c2461&id=8a783c8e31
Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses (ADCI)
Founded by author Claire Wade and supported by the Society of Authors, ADCI is a member-led peer support network for disabled and chronically ill authors, providing an online community that offers continuing professional and personal support. Their primary aim is to offer a friendly and supportive space where you can feel safe to ask questions, share experiences, offer advice, and make new connections.
Website: www.societyofauthors.org/Groups/Authors-Disabilities-Illnesses-Network
Private Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/authors.with.disabilities.chronic.illnessses
Chronic Illness Inclusion
Chronic Illness Inclusion is a Disabled People’s Organisation on a mission to change policies and perceptions around energy limiting conditions (ELCs) and chronic pain.
Website: www.chronicillnessinclusion.org.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/chronicinclude
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChronicInclude
Crip Collective
Crip Collective is a private informal Facebook group for disabled people in the publishing industry in the UK. It’s a way to bring us all together to support each other, share resources, articles and opportunities, discuss challenges, and to push for change in the industry. If you’re a publisher or other organisation in the industry with opportunities for disabled people working in the industry (including writers) that you’d like advertised in the group, email Ever Dundas: hello@everdundas.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/2470441376567311
Deafinitely Theatre
Deafinitely Theatre is the first deaf-launched and deaf-led professional theatre company in the UK producing quality bilingual theatre in British Sign Language and spoken English.
Website: www.deafinitelytheatre.co.uk
Instagram: www.instagram.com/deafinitelytheatre
Twitter: www.twitter.com/DeafinitelyT
Facebook: www.facebook.com/deafinitelytheatre
YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/markdeafinitely
The Deaf Poets Society
The Deaf Poets Society is an online literary journal that publishes poetry and art by deaf and/or disabled writers and artists. Founded in 2016, their mission is to provide a venue for deaf and disability literature and art, as well as to connect readers with established and emerging talent in the field.
Website: www.deafpoetssociety.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/thedeafpoetssociety
Twitter: www.twitter.com/thedeafpoets
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thedeafpoetssociety
Disability Arts Online (DAO)
An organisation led by disabled people, set up to advance disability arts and culture and to support disabled artists. DAO offer a means for the wider arts sector to engage with disabled artists by sharing professional opportunities, reading about their work on blogs and editorials and in some cases, with partnerships facilitated by DAO consultancy services.
Website: www.disabilityarts.online
Instagram: www.instagram.com/disabilityarts
Twitter: www.twitter.com/disabilityarts
Facebook: www.facebook.com/disabilityarts.online
YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/DisabilityArtsOnline
Disability Visibility Project
The Disability Visibility Project is an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture.
Website: www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/DisVisibility
The Disabled Artists Networking Community (DANC)
DANC is a community of just under a thousand people, the great majority of whom are disabled artists working in TV and the arts. DANC works with and brings together professional disabled artists and key decision/change makers in the industry to take a solution-focused approach.
Website: www.triplec.org.uk/danc
Disabled Kidlit Writers
DKW is a Facebook group for all disabled kidlit authors to support each other, talk about writing, ask questions, get advice and celebrate successes.
Private Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/622639168232657/about
Glasgow Disability Alliance (GDA)
GDA is a thriving disabled people-led organisation with 5000 members across Greater Glasgow. They are the biggest groundswell of disabled people in Scotland and a leading example of a grassroots community.
Website: www.gda.scot/about-gda
Instagram: www.instagram.com/gda__online
Twitter: www.twitter.com/gda__online
Facebook: www.facebook.com/glasgow.disabilityalliance
Healing Justice London
Healing Justice London creates the capacity to do transformational work, led by people of colour and lived experience, working at the intersections of oppression, health, healing and liberation practice.
Website: www.healingjusticeldn.org
Instagram: www.instagram.com/healingjusticeldn
Twitter: www.twitter.com/HJusticeLdn
Facebook: www.facebook.com/healingjusticeldn
Resting Up Collective
Resting Up is an interdisciplinary group of chronically ill and disabled friends practising slowness/crip time to create, think and interrupt neoliberal pressures and expectations on the body.
Website: www.stillill.uk/resting-up-collective
Substack: restingupcollective.substack.com
Sisters of Frida
Sisters of Frida is an experimental collective of disabled women (self-identifying disabled women, girls, and gender non-conforming people), who share experiences and mutual support.
Website: www.sisofrida.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sistersoffrida
Sins Invalid
Led by disabled people of colour, Sins Invalid is a disability justice-based performance project that incubates and celebrates disabled artists, centralising artists of colour and LGBTQIA+/gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalised.
Website: www.sinsinvalid.org/mission
Twitter: www.twitter.com/sinsinvalid
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sinsinvalid
TripleC
TripleC is a Community Interest Company with a mission to drive up the role of disabled people in the arts and media, and the role of the arts and media in the lives of disabled people.
Website: www.triplec.org.uk
Instagram: www.instagram.com/triplec.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/TripleC_U
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TripleCU
Unlimited
Unlimited backs disabled artists, challenges the cultural sector, works towards changing perceptions of disability and commissions extraordinary artworks from disabled artists until the whole of the cultural sector does.
Website: www.weareunlimited.org.uk
Resources: www.weareunlimited.org.uk/resources
Instagram: www.instagram.com/weareunltd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/weareunltd
YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/unlimitedonfilm
Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature
Wordgathering is a digital, Open Access, quarterly journal of disability poetry, literature, and the arts.
Website: www.wordgathering.com/about
Twitter: www.twitter.com/wordgathering
Facebook: www.facebook.com/people/Wordgathering/100063665373660
BSL Interpreters and Captioners
Interpreters Of Colour
Interpreters Of Colour is a vibrant international organisation with members from all over Europe. They are a large and diverse group of people, both deaf and hearing, who have come together in the fight against the systemic racism that pervades the signed language interpreting and translation profession.
Website: www.interpretersofcolour.net
Book an Interpreter: www.interpretersofcolour.net/book-an-interpreter
The National Register of Communication Professionals for Deaf and Deafblind People (NRCPD)
The NRCPD is the national voluntary regulator of over 1,700 language service professionals including British Sign Language/English Interpreters and Translators, Lipspeakers, Notetakers, Speech to Text Reporters and Interpreters for Deafblind People. The register can be used to find, for instance, a BSL interpreter or captioner for your event.
Website: www.nrcpd.org.uk
Instagram: www.instagram.com/_nrcpd
Twitter: www.twitter.com/NRCPD
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nrcpdorg
Performance Interpreting
Performance Interpreting provides and manages British Sign Language Interpreters for music, sports and entertainment venues across the UK.
Website: www.performanceinterpreting.co.uk/services
Facebook: www.facebook.com/performanceinterpreting
Stage Captions
Based in Edinburgh, Louisa McDaid is a professional Live Captioner, Electronic Notetaker and Lipspeaker, providing communication support to the deaf community since 2004, and is registered with the NRCPD.
Website: www.stagecaptions.com/services
Instagram: www.instagram.com/stage_captions
Twitter: www.twitter.com/stagecaptions
Facebook: www.facebook.com/stagecaptions
Stage Text
Stage Text is a deaf-led charity, passionate about making culture accessible to all by offering live captioning for events.
Website: www.stagetext.org
Resources: www.stagetext.org/for-venues/resources
Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagetext.insta
Twitter: www.twitter.com/stagetext
Facebook: www.facebook.com/STAGETEXT
Vocal Eyes
Vocal Eyes provides live and recorded audio description, training, consultancy, free resources and event listings for arts and heritage organisations.
Website: www.vocaleyes.co.uk/services
Twitter: www.twitter.com/VocalEyesAD
Facebook: www.facebook.com/VocalEyesAD
YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/vocaleye
SoundCloud: www.soundcloud.com/vocaleyesad
Making Accessible Documents
Clear and Large Print
Resources: www.sensorytrust.org.uk/resources/guidance/designing-with-clear-and-large-print
Dyslexia Friendly Style Guide
The Controversy of Accessible Type
Resources: medium.com/queer-design-club/the-controversy-of-accessible-type-8def04eb8808
Accessible PDF
Resources: accessible-pdf.info
AbilityNet: Creating Accessible Documents
Resources: abilitynet.org.uk/factsheets/creating-accessible-documents-0
Adobe: Creating accessible PDFs
Resources: helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-accessible-pdfs.html
Coloring for Colorblindness
Resources: davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/
Colour-Blind Friendly Palette
Resources: www.venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette
Facilities and Other Equipment
Changing Places Toilets
Thousands of people cannot use standard accessible toilets as they don’t provide changing benches or hoists, and most are too small to accommodate more than one person. It is now accepted and expected that everyone has a right to live in the community, to move around within it and access all its facilities, but for some disabled people, the lack of a fully accessible toilet is denying them this right. Providing these toilets in public places would make a dramatic difference to the lives of thousands of people.
Website: www.changing-places.org
Instagram: www.instagram.com/changingplacesuk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChangingPlaceUK
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChangingPlacesUK
Mobiloo
Mobiloo is the world’s first attended mobile toilet service with hoist and changing bench. Having a Mobiloo at a venue or event means anyone can attend.
Website: www.mobiloo.org.uk
Twitter: www.twitter.com/MobilooUK
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mobiloouk
Access Campaigns
Keep Festivals Hybrid
#KeepFestivalsHybrid is a campaign to encourage event organisers in the publishing world to prioritise accessibility by running events both in-person and online.
KFH have written an open letter to literary festival organisers, asking them to offer both in-person and online tickets. They received over 450 signatures from book industry professionals in the first month of the campaign, including Joanne Harris and Hilary Mantel.
Transport For All
Travelling to event venues for both audience and authors should be reliable and easy. It’s for the good of the publishing industry to help make this happen.
Transport for All is the only disabled-led group striving to increase access to transport and street space across the UK. They are a pan-impairment organisation, guided by the passionate belief that all disabled and older people have the right to travel with freedom and independence.
Website: www.transportforall.org.uk
Instagram: www.instagram.com/transport.for.all
Twitter: www.twitter.com/transportforall
Facebook: www.facebook.com/transportforall
Twitter Disability Hashtags
Twitter Hashtag: #DisabilityTwitter
Twitter Hashtag: #CripLit
Twitter Hashtag: #CripTheVote
Twitter Hashtag: #ActuallyAutistic
Twitter Hashtag: #KeepFestivalsHybrid
Example Access Riders
An Access Rider is a document a disabled person has composed that outlines their access requirements. This can be useful to send to organisations when they invite you to participate in an event.
Ever has provided her Access Rider below as an example for individuals to use as a template, and for organisations to see an example Access Rider and know roughly what to expect.
PDF Document: Example: Ever's Access Rider (Tagged PDF, 93KB)
This Access Rider is centred on an author doing events, but other Access Riders could cover areas of writing work such as working with agents and publishers.